Democratic Theorizing from the Margins

Chapter 5: Why: Rethinking Universals and Particulars

5 Why: Rethinking Universals and Particulars Introduction AS AN EMERGENT democratic theory attending to oppressed groups and pursuing a politics of recognition, diversity-based politics from the margins has also revived the discussion of why we engage in politics , offering new ideas about the empirical and normative grounds that motivate political involvement. Why do people participate in democratic politics, and what grounds ought democratic theory to encourage as the basis of politics? Although apparently contradictory to one another, major democratic theories have posited two main answers to this question . Some thinkers answer the why question of politics by pointing to individual self-interest. Others have based their ideas on conceptions of the public good. The prevalence of both these polar opposite answers relies on the tendency in democratic theories to split what is seen as altruistic motivations from selfish ones and to consider them at odds. We can see at work in much multiculturally oriented activism today, however, an assumption that politics is and ought to be about social relations of dignity and respect. In this view, democratic politics characterizes a process of identifying, interpreting, and developing strategies to meet our ever changing aspirations and needs as individuals and as communities . Such an understanding does not rely on dichotomizing specific and general motivations, striving simply for either self-centered or for 114 This chapter appeared in an earlier form in “Theorizing Citizenship from the Margins,” The Southeastern Political Review 26, 3 (1998): 519–544. Reprinted by permission. For their feedback and the lively discussion, I would like to thank those on the Feminist Theory and Citizenship panel at the 1996 Western Political Science Association Meeting where this was first presented as a paper: Martha Ackelsberg, Patricia Moynagh, Lori Marso, and Shane Phelan. I also owe a debt to Mark Roelofs and Bertell Ollman, whose work has stimulated some of the thinking over the years that has surprisingly found its way into the last sections of this chapter. collective ends. It is here, then, in looking critically at the relationship between universals and particulars, that we will best be able to understand this newer democratic theory’s answer to the why question and its significance in terms of the history of democratic thought. Instead of refusing to engage in the theoretical world of universals and particulars, a refusal commonly found in certain postmodern theories, diversitybased democratic theory can continue to make use of these concepts but in new, dialectical ways. In answering the question why in politics, much of multiculturalism focuses us again on the historical development of various ideas, offering an important critique of the existing framework of the argument and bringing the debate forward with new contributions. Citizenship and the Why Question In the last chapter I argued that in response to the question “what” are those involved in this new democratic praxis after? we must first attend to discussions concerning recognition, and from there find that those on the margins are redefining core concepts of Western political thought such as justice, freedom, and equality. Utilizing Charles Taylor’s essay “Multiculturalism and the Politics of Recognition,” I examined the move to incorporate the acknowledgment of cultural differences into democratic praxis and fundamental ideas such as equality. Taylor, however , points out that such acknowledgment generates an apparent contradiction in this new line of thinking. On the one hand, we can see an emphasis on sameness historically in the demand for equality as a universal human right. On the other hand, the politics of recognition seems at first glance to move in the opposite direction—toward the demand for recognition based on all of our differences. In the essay on recognition , Taylor demonstrates that these two demands are not quite as separate as they may seem. He writes that “the politics of difference is full of denunciations of discrimination and refusals of second-class citizenship .” Such a statement suggests that the politics of difference rests on a notion of universal equality. This might appear to cause tension, philosophically. What we are more likely to see in this case, however, is an interactive relationship in which particular aspects of difference are not actually standing against universal concepts. Taylor explains this in that “we give due acknowledgment only to what is universally present —everyone has an identity—through recognizing what is peculiar to Why: Rethinking Universals and Particulars 115 each. The universal demand powers an acknowledgment of...